The wonders of modern television...

You may often wonder about where the future of modern television may lie?  It blew your mind the first time you heard about a bunch of people thrown onto an island and left to survive for a month to compete against each other for a million dollars. You may deem yourself a reality T.V show guru who can name all twenty-one Survivor winners and who also has a 77% chance of predicting the winner of this season's redemption island. But before you can call yourself the Deepak Chopra of reality T.V, and before you can see where it's all going (everything eventually comes around full circle, which is what I learned from The Lion King) we've got to see where it all began. Obviously wanting to keep it short and to the point (something my university degree didn't quite train me to do), let's have a quick look at where it all started... It all began in 1940 when Allen Funt came up with Candid Camera (which was a rip off of a radio show before there was T.V, yes kids, there once was a word without T.V...). The show consisted of a camera crew who followed around some tricksters and video taped practical jokes. This should ring a proverbial bell in your head. "Oh no" you gasp, "Ashton Kutcher is a thief, and can't come up with his own material?" Who would have ever thought? So, that being said, we've evolved since then, and have moved into a melding pot of shows involving every dirty little sin or wildly possible thing out there. From cute girls eating hairy spiders to game shows where the main purpose is to get hurt (don't scoff or turn up your nose people, we all secretly laugh when someone trips, so all someone had to do was play on our twisted sadistic sense of humours and make it socially acceptable, and enjoyable, to laugh at someone getting hurt). 

Well, it was only until recently that i came across a new breed of plain stupid (or some might say genius), to which i give you, the Rotisserie channel...

So, at this point you're probably asking where exactly we're going here and how does this all fit in. Well, to answer that question, all I have to do is nod my head in the direction of the spinning chickens below, and invite you to have a good look at the picture... Within seconds, you should notice that this is actually a TV station!

                               

Now I'm sure we've all come across the fireplace channel, and the fish tank channel, to which we thought, "I hope to god I'm not actually paying for this". And after the shock that you most likely are paying for it and how P.O'd it made you, you most likely returned shortly after changing the channel to watch the little yellow fish float around for an hour or so secretly hoping to catch mother nature at her finest, and the food pyramid at its best. And for the select few of us who actually admit to watching it for longer (we all know who we are) out of sheer interest to see what would happen next, and who are the ones who actually ended up naming the stupid things, and finally found a good use for picture in picture to make sure "Fluffy", "Figaro" or "Klaus" don't go belly up without us missing it.

But last night I drew the line, when I was watching T.V with my girlfriend, we happened to stumble across channel 208; the chicken channel.

Now, similar to the stupid fish tank channel (which may not be so stupid to some of you anymore), I didn't know whether to burst out in hysterical laughter or simply into hysteria. However, after having a decent chuckle at the expense of the chickens and some rather bad jokes, I was strangely drawn back to see what was happening on the chicken channel. At first it was about five minutes, then my brain was barraged with questions and it quickly became 10,15, 30, 45 minutes... I sat there, glued to the T.V hoping to catch someone's hand pulling a chicken out; and when there wasn't a hand after that 45 minute mark the tension began to grow. The heat from my fireplace in my living room roared, creating the elusion as if I were actually sitting right in front of the rotisserie. So much so that I could even smell the slow roasted meat.  My anxiety grew more and more as time ticked by, every second the succulent chicken dried out a little bit more, insanity began to sink in, only until I realized the video I was watching was most likely a loop of the same footage over and over. Well this discovery only led me to watch the channel longer, in hopes to catch the point where the footage looped. It was then that I had realized that I'd been watching this  stupid channel for a solid hour or so. Upon further study, I realized that this channel was actually provided by Swiss Chalet. What a way to advertise! Now, here is where we come full circle; In the early stages of movie theatres, movies would often contain subliminal messages of snacks in attempt to trigger the subconscious into wanting something to eat.  Now a days due to the probability of our inability to recognize such ads (due to the laziness of our brains) and most likely the legal repercussions of attempting to insert ideas into peoples heads (don't get me started on todays advertisements) why the hell not just loop spinning chickens on T.V 24/7? Who is the genius who came up with this one? it's probably cheaper to do, and creates more buzz then a typical cheesy ad of a bunch of white middle class nuclear families gathered around a table with that dreamy soap opera effect while they laugh and eat chicken, you know, just a typical sunday lunch after mass.


Moral of the story is:

Last Night I Dreamed of Chickens

Last night I dreamed of chickens,
there were chickens everywhere,
they were standing on my stomach,
they were nesting in my hair,
they were pecking at my pillow,
they were hopping on my head,
they were ruffling up their feathers
as they raced about my bed.


They were on the chairs and tables,
they were on the chandeliers,
they were roosting in the corners,
they were clucking in my ears,
there were chickens, chickens, chickens
for as far as I could see...
when I woke today, I noticed
there were eggs on top of me.


~Jack Prelutsky~